There’s no rational or science-based reason for marijuana to be illegal.
It’s illegal because it’s customary. We have an unbroken tradition of demonizing marijuana going back more than 60 years. Far longer than the memory of our grandfathers and therefore throughout eternity.
That’s how customs are built. Once, a very long time ago, it seemed like a good idea. Now it’s just … the custom.
It’s the way of our people.
The problem with this custom is that it is based in the ignorance and racism of the 1930s. The ignorance is still around almost as much as the racism, but breaking a custom based on ignorance and false beliefs is virtually impossible.
I don’t really care if it’s tilting at windmills. Certain things need to be said.
The United States of America has a drug policy that is cruel and destructive. And damned expensive, both in dollars and human lives and all for …
nothing.
People get frightened when you suggest ending the drug war. “It will put drugs in the hands of children” they say. “There will be legions of stoned-out zombies roaming the streets killing people at random.” (Seriously. Someone actually used that as an argument once on a message board.) We spend so much money. We spend so many lives. We burden law enforcement. We clog the courts and prisons. It’s GOT to be working. It’s GOT to be saving us from a terrible fate. Look at what it costs us!
The drug war is NOT working. It does NOT keep drugs out of the hands of anybody who wants them. The price of heroine is now half what it was in the 1990s [pdf]. Cocaine used to be a rich person’s drug. Not any more. It’s cheap and plentiful. Marijuana in the hands of children? Marijuana is easier for them to get than beer. It’s in their hands. All who wish to smoke pot are doing so. The drug war has not prevented that and never will.
The drug war ruins the lives of nearly a million people EVERY YEAR in the US alone. Drugs? About ten to twenty percent of people who smoke marijuana abuse it to the point that it interferes with their lives. About twenty-percent of people who use drugs in general are addicted or (in the case of marijuana) habituated. Eighty-percent of all people who use drugs of all kinds merely have a pleasant evening once in a while.
Millions of people die of alcohol-related accidents and diseases every year.
But that’s customary.
It is the way of our people.
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